When Jeff Sturman’s title was changed from CIO to chief digital officer a few years ago, the rationale was clear. Memorial Healthcare System wanted more focus on the consumer experience, and they wanted it to come from the top. As part of the shift, call centers now report to the CDO, which provides the opportunity to shape the experience from the beginning

“We have to figure out our competitive advantage,” Sturman said during an interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO. “Instead of patients coming to us, I think we need to get to them, and that means delivering where they want.”

During the interview, he talked about his team’s core objectives – including moving to a new ERP system; how they’re leveraging analytics to improve patient flow; why partnerships are more critical than ever; and the ultimate goal of taking the friction out of healthcare.  

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Key Takeaways:

* “We’re really good at hospital-based medicine. We know we’re not as good at some of the other ways in which patients and consumers want to get care.”

* One of his core objectives? To act as a cohesive organization, rather than 6 different hospitals. “We’re trying move as a health system, and focus on creating standards, creating tools, and creating consistency in experience.”

* Implementing Epic’s command center to improve patient flow in the ED and get patients out of the hospital and into post-acute settings quickly and more efficiently.

* Migrating to a new ERP after 25 years is a big lift, but Sturman believes it will “get us to the next level in terms of how we manage our business.”

* As with any initiative, the most critical component in implementing a new ERP is “the cultural lift” and the change management piece.

Q&A with Jeff Sturman, CIO, Memorial Healthcare

Gamble:  Hi Jeff, thank you for doing this. I want to talk about some of your core objectives at Memorial, what you guys are looking at for next year, and then some of what’s happened as far as the restructuring of leadership. First, for some background, Memorial Healthcare is located in South Florida and you have six hospitals?

Sturman:  Correct. We’re about a $2.8 billion healthcare system with 2,300 providers on our medical staff, and almost 15,000 employees. We’re a public system. We’re the South Broward Hospital District so we own essentially a third of the county; the other two-thirds is our sister health system, Broward Health. They’re smaller in terms of revenue and employees, but that’s because we continue to serve a lot of areas even outside our general geography.

It’s a great healthcare system. I love being here. It’s very family and community focused, and I think we’re doing some great things on the digital front.

 

Partnering with Broward Health

Gamble:  I definitely want to get into that more. But just for clarification, what’s the relationship like with Broward as far leadership?

Sturman:  We’re very close, which is relatively new in that closeness in the last year and a half. Shane Strum is their CEO; he’s a good friend of mine and is a terrific leader. He used to be with Memorial and was also the former chief of staff for three different governors in Florida.

We’re working in partnership with Broward Health right now. One of the first areas out of the gate is IT collaboration. There’s a lot going on there. Our relationship is very good. I’m actually doing double duty these days as the interim chief digital officer as well as my role with Memorial.